“Oh well. Some men are just born lucky. I’d like you to keep me informed on this and… that other matter.”
“I certainly will, Mr. Sansouci.”
“Let me know how things are going tonight,” then, driven by a reckless urge, I added: “Drop by personally, if you can, just like old times… perhaps.”
Her eyes widened slightly at that, but then she smiled her disarming smile, and said she’d “take it under advisement.”
I didn’t have long to wait before the link buzzed again. It was Cheri Millefiori, smiling seductively and dressed in a new lemon-colored sari flecked with green batik dragonflies. It was as though she were calling on cue, which she probably was.
“Well, Shade… I can call you that now, can’t I? I thought if you were feeling bored with your anti-progress activities, you might want to come on out to Soyinka Patera and take a look at Marjolin’s future in the making—strictly professional meeting of course. But I think it will be both useful and stimulating.”
“Of course,” I replied, “I can think of no better way to spend my afternoon, now that I’ve got my troops busy in defense of ecological sanity, trying to spoil your fun and profit.” And we arranged to meet in front of the Sharawaggi offices and share transport out to the construction site.
4
It had rained while I was reviewing the public records. Not a heavy rain; habitat weather is relentlessly gentle. There’s not enough convection in the interior atmosphere to produce even the most minor of thunderstorms, but umbrellas are still sometimes useful. “Rainfall” is more like congealed humidity, descending softly in droplets just large enough to trigger tactile awareness, until the patina of the soil changes darkly and flower petals become lustrous with tiny jewels of moisture.
Across the flagstones of the pedestrian boulevard, shallow puddles with mirror-like surfaces reflected crisscross traceries of the sky above. I shattered reflections into ripples with the soles of my sandals as I walked splatterfully, resisting the urge to skip, thinking that all this scene really needed was a little lame balloon seller whistling far and wee.
The dome was working its magic on me. Its environment was too perfect, too serene, to let anything interfere with living. Not even a senior VP for crisis management could resist the urge to slow down, relax and smell the flowers.
I had the center of the boulevard pretty much to myself as I walked across the arcology’s courtyard. The natives were engaging in their social walkabouts mostly under the Moorish arches of the arcade which encircled it. A few people strolled in the open, decorative umbrellas under their arms, smiling and greeting each other familiarly. Barefoot women in iridescent saris walked carefully holding the trailing fabric away from the damp ground, or daintily lifted the hems of loose flowing gowns ankle high. Men like me had less care for our baggy pajamas, and it usually showed in the damp cuffs of our trouser-legs.
Sharawaggi Information Technologies Group occupied several levels in the southern end of the arcology, right in the shadow of the towering blue glass aiguille which Otis said in retrospect had been the first sign of our present trouble. Cheri was there, standing beside a groundcar, accompanied by a towering blond man in a sarong, who seemed to have been carved out of mahogany by a sculptor dreaming of Aryan supermen from Tahiti. She introduced him to me as Mr. Izvoschik, the driver.
“Driver?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied with her usual scornful nonchalance. “The habitat’s creators held to their belief that obsolete technology was more relaxing than the kind which just does what it’s told. There are no smart-transport vehicles under the dome. You need to hire Mr. Izvoschik, or somebody like him, if you ever want to leave the beaten track and go anywhere off the trolley routes.”
“No bags?” Mr. Izvoschik spoke.
“No, not today, Mr. Izvoschik,” Cheri replied. “This is just a day trip out to Soyinka Patera. Our usual route, please.”
The Aryan superman dutifully held the groundcar’s door while we boarded, then folded himself into the seat ahead of us and began working the controls. We slid smoothly forward, with the vehicle emitting a barely audible electric hum. Our speed translated itself into the first wind I’d felt since my arrival, and Cheri shook out her meter-length golden hair, letting it trail like a pennant behind us, a look of rapture on her face.
“I love to feel a breeze,” she said. “I’m sure it’s an ordinary thing for you, but in here it is an exotic experience.”
I really couldn’t think of a response, so I remained quiet. I was once again struck by how much contempt she seemed to have for the dome and all things in it, despite being herself such a quintessential Marjolin, a perfect specimen of “True Sybarite.”
“Oh look!” She spoke again as we rounded a corner leaving the confines of the courtyard, “That’s where I was born!” And she pointed to a terraced bay of elegant balconies and florid arches cast in dyed polystone. Cursive letters executed in sinuous tubes of electrically charged neon glowed over the main entrance, one more example of the aesthetics of anachronism.
“Agapemone?” I asked, thinking: abode of love?
“Yes, up in the second tier. Growing up, I was a member of the ballet rose. You should visit it during your stay here. I may be a bit biased, but I think it offers the most refined service of any bordello under the dome.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” I said, deciding that might explain a few tilings about Cheri Millefiori. Our dossier had omitted details like this. It had told me only that she had been born here in Southern Settlement, and when. Until now, I’d had no information to give me insight into her character.
“It was a very good place to grow up in,” she said, perhaps sensing my thoughts. “And a good place to make contacts too. Sharawaggi needed staff who knew the dome inside and out to run its operations here. People truly connected to this planet, not just visiting. I was the person they needed. Agapemone is where I succeeded in convincing the right people of that.”
As she was speaking, she put her arm across my shoulders, and leaned her head against my own, nuzzling me behind my ear. Not even the breeze of our vehicle’s motion could blow away the scent of spicy fragrance which she had applied to her skin.
“Wasn’t this supposed to be a strictly professional meeting?” I asked, internally ordering my hormones to sit down and shut up..
“You are a curious man,” she seemed to hum through a smile rather than speak out loud. “I know, and you know I know, that you enjoy life just as much as I do and in all the same ways, yet you divide your life into compartments—time for business, time for pleasure, one time for love and another for ambition. It’s like you have a special habitat dome built into your psyche isolating the good things within its bubble while the rest is reserved for dust-and-acid storms. I don’t think I’d like to live that way. You throw away too much that just happens to offer itself to you on the wrong side of the bubble-wall.”
And the light dimmed as the groundcar passed beyond the margin of Southern Settlement’s agro-hectares and plunged beneath the flower-filled canopy of the cloud forest which Otis’s skill kept growing in this part of the habitat. The scent of orchids and wild cloves breezed past us, and scores of azure-and-scarlet hummingbirds flitted through gaps between the trees in pursuit of nectar. Cheri left her warm lips against my ear, and we both became silent as we were swept past a Bird-of-Paradise singing its weirdly erotic ululating song.
We emerged from the forest half an hour later and began the shallow descent into Soyinka Patera. The air became tainted with the odor of rotting ferns and other dead things. Graceful dragonflies zipped about the wreckage of the wetlands looking for prey in the deep ruts left by the heavy dirt-moving equipment’s wheels. Papyrus and cattails had been crushed into soggy mats of floating green, and in one place it seemed a stampede of frogs had erupted from a dying marsh pond, only to be murderously flattened by a passing vehicle. All that remained was a slick organic pavement across the road.